The Soulstealers is about a sixteen year old girl named Arnaka, who belongs a magic-enabled upper class living on a floating world. When her best friend, Hannah, is killed so that Arnaka can perform 'adult magic,' Arnaka sets out on a journey to The Below in an attempt to get rid of the soul stealing system.

While the characters in The Soulstealers were excellent and I really appreciated the diversity, unfortunately I just couldn't really get into the story enough for it to be more than three stars. It took an extremely long time to get going, which takes a lot of finesse to pull off. There were also intermittent flashbacks of Arnaka and Hannah's childhoods, which felt a tad unnecessary to me. The world itself was familiar and similar to many other fantasy worlds.

Overall, the book was pretty good, but unfortunately not one that engaged me as much as I would have liked. Perhaps its because I've been reading a lot of Really Excellent books this week, but I just couldn't help feeling just a little bit let down by this one.

Soulstealers- Jacqueline Rohrbach
Excellent crafted world of Druids,Magic, lore
An adventures dark tale with complex relationships and sexual diversity.
Soulstealers is great coming of age novel with strong ties to female friendships. I really enjoyed Rohbaach world building and enjoyable main character, Arnaka Skytree.
I am having a book hangover from it . I couldn’t but it down.
I hope the author continues this great storyline in an upcoming sequel !


I Received a complementary copy of this book for an honest review.
All opinions are my own

This is the first novel I’ve read by Rohrbach and I loved it. It’s much darker than I expected it to be with an immersive story line. In a palace kept afloat above the earth by magic, Arnaka Skytree is the next in line to rule the druids. Her coming of age requires that she has a soul familiar which is brought about by the death of one of the peasant girls who is also her best friend. Her only way to fight the barbaric custom is to harness her power with the soul familiar and fight from within.

This is a world where women have the power of magic but their use of it is at the behest of the men. Men control the army and the administrative functions. Women use their power for beauty, fashion and gardens. Social hierarchy is strongly delineated and the gap between the wealthy and the poor is vast. The more Arnaka learns, the more resistant she becomes to continuing the way they live.

Arnaka is a wonderful character. For all her power, both before her soul familiar and after, she’s clumsy and she makes mistakes with disastrous consequences. Her journey to unseating the power of the wealthy is fraught with twists and turns, danger and constantly looming failure. The harshness of the world she’s in is graphic and disturbing but also riveting. The characters she fights with and against are superb in their diversity and characteristics.

For all the darkness there is humour which breaks the tension at just the right moment. There is ethnic diversity, sexual diversity and some very beautiful relationships. The story contains violence, internalized misogyny and family abuse.

Book received from Netgalley and NineStar Press for an honest review.